There are a lot of people that keep making the mistake of confusing Social Security with some kind of government handout. This is not the case. Social Security is a prepaid retirement plan and the way it was set up was as follows.

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In 1934 FDR contrived a plan where every employed person would “contribute” a certain percent of their wages, matched by the same “contribution” by the employer, to be kept in a dedicated fund to be given back to the employee, in monthly payments, after the employee retired. The more money the employee earned the more money the government withheld and the larger the monthly payments to the retiree would be after retirement. These “contributions” were government mandated with fines and/or imprisonment for noncompliance.

This system worked well until 1967 when LBJ couldn’t see all of this money laying there unspent so he raided our, dedicated, Social Security fund to pay for his, so called Great Society. After that the door was open and there was a general run on our dedicated fund. The government was giving our money to people who had never worked a day in their life and calling it Social Security.

If the government would repay what they “borrowed” and quit calling all of these schemes to buy voters with our prepaid fund “Social Security” and call it welfare, as it should be, our funding would be more than solvent.

It really hurts to work, and pay into this fund, for 40 to 45 years and have some person, who is ignorant of the facts, call it Geezer welfare or an entitlement. In a way they are right in calling it this. I worked all of my adult life and paid, by law, into my retirement fund and I am entitled to it.

I've worked at the Brainerd Dispatch with various duties since Dec. 7, 1983. Starting off as an Ad Designer and currently Director of Audience Development. The Dispatch has been an interesting and challenging place to work. I'm fortunate to have made many friends, both co-workers and customers.